Space Exploration Technologies says it has signed its first commercial contract for a new rocket that will be more powerful than the one that launched the company's Dragon capsule to the International Space Station last week.
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SpaceX signs 1st customer for big new rocket - 0 views
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loft a satellite for the communications services company Intelsat, using a Falcon Heavy launch vehicle.
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Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful rocket in the world and, historically, second only to the Saturn V rockets that launched the Apollo missions to the moon.
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16th-century Korean mummy provides clue to hepatitis B virus genetic code - 0 views
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discovery of a mummified Korean child with relatively preserved organs enabled an Israeli-South Korean scientific team to conduct a genetic analysis on a liver biopsy which revealed a unique hepatitis B virus
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may be used as a model to study the evolution of chronic hepatitis B and help understand the spread of the virus,
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may shed further light on the migratory pathway of hepatitis B in the Far East from China and Japan to Korea as well as to other regions in Asia and Australia where it is a major cause of cirrhosis and liver cancer
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Carbon 14 tests of the clothing of the mummy suggests that the boy lived around the 16th century during the Korean Joseon Dynasty
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viral DNA sequences recovered from the liver biopsy enabled the scientists to map the entire ancient hepatitis B viral genome.
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researchers compared the ancient DNA sequences with contemporary viral genomes disclosing distinct differences
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changes in the genetic code are believed to result from spontaneous mutations and possibly environmental pressures during the virus evolutionary process
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analysis suggests that the reconstructed mummy's hepatitis B virus DNA had its origin between 3,000 to 100,000 years ago.
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In recent years, universal immunization of newborns against hepatitis B in Israel and in South Korea has lead to a massive decline in the incidence of infection.
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Irish mathematicians explain why Guinness bubbles sink (w/ video) - 0 views
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Simulations of the elongated vortices in (left) a pint glass, where bubbles sink near the glass wall, and (right) an anti-pint glass, where bubbles rise near the wal
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Why do the bubbles in a glass of stout beer such as Guinness sink while the beer is settling, even though the bubbles are lighter than the surrounding liquid?
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a team of mathematicians from the University of Limerick has shown that the sinking bubbles result from the shape of a pint glas
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narrows downwards and causes a circulation pattern that drives both fluid and bubbles downwards at the wall of the glass
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not just the bubbles themselves that are sinking (in fact, they're still trying to rise), but the entire fluid is sinking and pulling the bubbles down with it.
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stout beers such as Guinness foam due to a combination of carbon dioxide and nitrogen bubbles, while other beers foam due only to carbon dioxide bubbles
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nitrogen results in a less bitter taste, a creamy long-lasting head, and smaller bubbles that sink while the beer is settling.
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researchers noted that they are still uncertain of the specific mechanism responsible for reducing the bubble density near the wall for the pint geometry and increasing it for the anti-pint one.
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the same flow pattern occurs with other types of beers, but the larger carbon dioxide bubbles are less subject to the downward drag than the smaller nitrogen bubbles in stout beers.
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a simple experiment can confirm the proposed explanation. If Guinness is poured into a tall cylindrical glass and the glass is tilted, bubbles move upwards near its upper surface and downwards near its lower surface. In this case, the upper surface acts like an anti-pint glass and the lower surface acts like a pint glass.
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Discovery of historical photos sheds light on Greenland ice loss - 0 views
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Researchers at the National Survey and Cadastre of Denmark
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had been storing the glass plates since explorer Knud Rasmussen's expedition to the southeast coast of Greenland in the early 1930s.
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Ohio State University researchers and colleagues in Denmark describe how they analyzed ice loss in the region by comparing the images on the plates to aerial photographs and satellite images taken from World War II to today.
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imagery shows that glaciers in the region were melting even faster in the 1930s than they are today
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A brief cooling period starting in the mid-20th century allowed new ice to form, and then the melting began to accelerate again in the 2000s.
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we now have a detailed historical analogue for more recent glacier loss
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confirmed that glaciers are very sensitive indicators of climate."
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cleaning up in the basement and had found some old glass plates with glaciers on them
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The reason the plates were forgotten was that they were recorded for mapping, and once the map was produced they didn't have much value."
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They contained aerial photographs of land, sea and glaciers in the southeast region of the country, along with travel photos of Rasmussen's team.
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researchers digitized all the old images and used software to look for differences in the shape of the southeast Greenland coastline where the ice meets the Atlantic Ocean
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calculated the distance the ice front moved in each time period.
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Over the 80 years, two events stand out: glacial retreats from 1933-1934 and 2000-2010
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1930s, fewer glaciers were melting than are today, and most of those that were melting were land-terminating glaciers, meaning that they did not contact the sea.
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were melting retreated an average of 20 meters per year - the fastest retreating at 374 meters per year
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Fifty-five percent of the glaciers in the study had similar or higher retreat rates during the 1930s than they do today.
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more glaciers in southeast Greenland are retreating today, and the average ice loss is 50 meters per year. That's because a few glaciers with very fast melting rates - including one retreating at 887 meters per year - boost the overall average.
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From 1943-1972, southeast Greenland cooled - probably due to sulfur pollution, which reflects sunlight away from the earth.
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Sulfur dioxide is a poisonous gas produced by volcanoes and industrial processes. It has been tied to serious health problems and death, and is also the main ingredient in acid rain.
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deadly pollution caused the climate to cool, but rather that the brief cooling allowed researchers to see how Greenland ice responded to the changing climate.
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glaciers responded to the cooling more rapidly than researchers had seen in earlier studies
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Sixty percent of the glaciers advanced during that time, while 12 percent were stationary
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now that the warming has resumed, the glacial retreat is dominated by marine-terminating outlet glaciers, the melting of which contributes to sea level rise.
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we see that the mid-century cooling stabilized the glaciers," Box said. "That suggests that if we want to stabilize today's accelerating ice loss, we need to see a little cooling of our own."
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Tomato genome fully sequenced - 0 views
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the genome was sequenced from the "Heinz 1706" tomato
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the genome of the tomato
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has been decoded, and it becomes an important step toward improving yield, nutrition, disease resistance, taste and color of the tomato and other crops
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as well as the sequence of a wild relative
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researchers report that tomatoes possess some 35,000 genes arranged on 12 chromosomes
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For any characteristic of the tomato, whether it's taste, natural pest resistance or nutritional content, we've captured virtually all those genes
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Now that the genome sequence of one variety of tomato is known, it will also be easier and much less expensive for seed companies and plant breeders to sequence other varieties
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he first tomato genome sequence came at a cost of millions of dollars, subsequent ones might only cost $10,000 or less, by building on these initial findings.
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The sequencing of the tomato genome has implications for other plant species
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Strawberries, apples, melons, bananas and many other fleshy fruits, share some characteristics with tomatoes
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information about the genes and pathways involved in fruit ripening can potentially be applied to them, helping to improve food quality, food security and reduce costs
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FAA Clears Virgin Galactic to Begin Rocket-Powered Test Flights | Space.com - 0 views
www.space.com/eshiptwo-rocket-tests-faa.html
scibyte49 VirginGalactic SpaceShipTwo PrivateSpaceTravel
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Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo suborbital space tourism vehicle has won U.S. regulatory approval to begin powered flight testing of the rocket-propelled craft later this year
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May 30 announcement that the experimental launch permit from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorizes the Scaled Composites development team "to progress to the rocket-powered phase of test flight
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flight system consists of two vehicles, SpaceShipTwo and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft
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esigned to launch six passengers and two pilots into suborbital spa
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offer a few minutes of weightlessness, then return to Eath
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not set a date for beginning commercial service
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company said May 30 that it expects to begin rocket-powered test flights before the end of 2012
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SpaceShipTwo will soon return to flight, testing the aerodynamic performance of the spacecraft with the full weight of the rocket motor system on board
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Integration of key rocket motor components, already begun during a now-concluding period of downtime for routine maintenance, will continue in the autumn
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expects to begin rocket powered, supersonic test flights under the just-issued experimental permit toward the end of the year."
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Rare meteorite fragment donated to UC Davis geologist - 0 views
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UC Davis alumnus Gregory Jorgensen ’90, Ph.D. ’95, presented UC Davis geologist Qing-Zhu Yin with a donation today, May 30, of a meteorite piece that fell beside his driveway in Coloma, Calif.
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invaluable” to science and has asked others to come forth with donations
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donation is one of two meteorite pieces he stumbled
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first was found while taking a casual walk with his wife, Alice, and 7-month-old daughter, Abriela at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park near his home.
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He hadn’t heard the fireball that indicated the meteorite’s fall on April 22, and his wife was in Los Angeles at the time
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When they saw people at the park looking for something on the ground, they thought they were mushroom hunters
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When we got back to the car, I looked down and saw a rock that looked a little different
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“I put it in my pocket. Over the course of the days, I figured out it was a meteorite
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Sun-powered plane waits for better weather to continue trip - 0 views
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Swiss sun-powered aircraft Solar Impulse is waiting for weather conditions to improve before continuing on its first transcontinental flight, organisers said Wednesday
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experimental plane, which is not designed to fly into clouds
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landed in Madrid on Friday
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end of the first leg of its attempt to reach Morocco without using a drop of fuel.
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After technical checks and a pilot change it was hoped Solar Impulse would leave for Rabat on Monday but its departure was put off due to strong winds
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waiting for a good weather forecast window on the Madrid-Rabat leg
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If successful the 2,500-kilometre (1,550-mile) journey will be the longest to date for the aircraft after a flight to Paris and Brussels last year and it will mark the first time that the plane has left Europe.
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intended as a rehearsal in the run-up to the plane's round-the-world flight planned for 2014
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wingspan of a large airliner but weighs no more than a saloon car, is fitted with 12,000 solar cells feeding four electric motors driving propellors
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Mars missions may learn from meteor Down Under - 0 views
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Scientists have tried to find out how the planet's environment came to contain methane gas, which contains carbon – a substance found in all living things
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meteorites, which continually bombard the surface of Mars, contain enough carbon compounds to generate methane when they are exposed to sunlight.
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Scientists planning future missions to Mars could use the findings to fine-tune their experiments, potentially making their trips more valuable.
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researchers carried out experiments on samples from the Murchison meteorite, which fell on Australia more than 40 years ago
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team took particles from the rock – which has a similar composition to meteorites on Mars
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exposed them to levels of ultraviolet radiation equivalent to sunlight on the red planet, which is cooler than Earth.
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the amount of methane given off by the particles was significant, and could account for a large part of the methane in Mars' atmosphere.
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Researchers develop nanodevice manufacturing strategy using DNA 'building blocks' - 0 views
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Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have developed a method for building complex nanostructures out of short synthetic strands of DNA
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interlocking DNA "building blocks," akin to Legos, can be programmed to assemble themselves into precisely designed shapes, such as letters and emoticons
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Further development of the technology could enable the creation of new nanoscale devices, such as those that deliver drugs directly to disease sites.
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DNA is best known as a keeper of genetic information
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in an emerging field of science known as DNA nanotechnology, it is being explored for use as a material with which to build tiny, programmable structures for diverse applications
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most research has focused on the use of a single long biological strand of DNA, which acts as a backbone along which smaller strands bind to its many different segments, to create shapes
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called DNA origami
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In focusing on the use of short strands of synthetic DNA and avoiding the long scaffold strand, Yin's team developed an alternative building method
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Each SST is a single, short strand of DNA
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One tile will interlock with another tile, if it has a complementary sequence of DNA
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are no complementary matches, the blocks do not connect
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collection of tiles can assemble itself into specific, predetermined shapes through a series of interlocking local connections
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researchers created just over one hundred different designs, including Chinese characters, numbers, and fonts, using hundreds of tiles for a single structure of 100 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in size.
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SSTs could have some important applications in medicine
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SSTs could organize themselves into drug-delivery machines that maintain their structural integrity until they reach specific cell targets, and because they are synthetic, can be made highly biocompatible.
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Mars methane linked to meteorites - 0 views
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Until now no-one had thought to check whether exposing meteorites to sunlight would create methane.
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work on ultraviolet radiation's role in releasing methane from vegetation on Earth led them naturally to question its source in Mars' atmosphere
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Methane doesn't persist in the atmosphere, which means there must be some sort of process that continuously produces it
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because the estimates for the amount of methane produced don't explain the level of methane in Mars' atmosphere
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amount of methane we measured from the meteorite was much higher than we expected
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can't say where this organic matter comes from, but our results show that it definitely has an extraterrestrial origin
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a significant amount of weathering would be necessary to convert any meteoritic organic matter to methane
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because ultraviolet rays cannot penetrate far into minerals.
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while meteorites contribute to the production of methane in the Martian atmosphere, this doesn't mean they're the only source.
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SpaceX Dragon Capsule Splashes Down in Pacific, Ending Historic Test Flight | Space.com - 0 views
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SpaceX Dragon capsule made a water landing off the coast of Baja California, Mexico at 11:42 a.m. EDT (1542 GMT)
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began its return to Earth in earnest at 10:51 a.m. EDT (1451 GMT) with a nine minute, 50 second de-orbit engine burn.
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Stunning Visualization of 56 Years of Tornadoes in the US - 0 views
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Using information from data.gov, tech blogger John Nelson has created this spectacular image of tornado paths in the US over a 56 year period
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categorizes the storms by F-scale with the brighter neon lines representing more violent storms
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Nelson also provided some stats on all the storms in the different categories
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Dragon's Ocean Splashdown Caps Historic Opening of New Space Era - 0 views
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dual drogue parachutes deploy at 45,000 feet to stabilize and slow the spacecraft
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Full deployment of the drogues triggers the release of the main parachutes, each 116 feet in diameter, at about 10,000 feet
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picture perfect splashdown at 11:42 a.m. EDT today, May 31, in the Pacific Ocean, off the west coast of Baja, California, some 560 miles southwest of Los Angeles
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It will take about two days to deliver the craft to the port of Los Angeles where the most critical cargo items will be removed for quick shipment to NASA
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The de-orbit burn to drop Dragon out of orbit took place precisely on time at 10:51 a.m. EDT for a change in velocity of 100 m/sec about 246 miles above the Indian Ocean directly to the south of India as the craft was some 200 miles in front of the ISS
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The Draco thruster firing lasted 9 minutes and 50 seconds and sent Dragon plummeting through the Earth’s atmosphere where it had to survive extreme temperatures exceeding 3000 degrees F (1600 degrees C) before landing.
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first US vehicle of any kind to arrive at the ISS since the July 2011
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Missing 'Big Bang' Antarctic Telescope Found - 0 views
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Astronomers and students from the University of Minnesota hoping to search for radiation left over from the Big Bang instead spent the past few days looking for their telescope
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6,000 lb (2729 kg)
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the truck driver who was supposed to deliver it to a NASA facility in Palestine, Texas
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he’s not talking and police in Texas won’t press charges against him.
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good news is that the missing telescope has been found – sitting at a truck wash — after a frantic cross-country search
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telescope is a high-tech irreplaceable piece of equipment that is 22 ft high 15 ft wide (6.5 X 4.5 meters
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designed to detect radiation from the Big Bang and it took fifteen people 8 years to build
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will be shipped to Antarctica, where it will be attached to a giant balloon in December and sent 110,000 feet (33,500 meters) into the atmosphere.
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Friday, a Minnesota trucking company sent off one of their trucks with telescope inside
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Monday there was no word from the trucker and the scientists started to panic when the truck didn’t show up at the NASA facility
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Calls to the trucker went unanswered
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The owner of the trucking company sent his son to Dallas to search for the truck and the driver
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only clue was a credit card charge at a Dallas truck stop.
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The son found the driver, asleep in the cab of the truck, but the trailer, with the precious cargo inside, was nowhere to be seen.
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driver said he left the trailer at a hotel parking lot
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when the searchers arrived, it wasn’t there
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trucker clammed up and wouldn’t provide any more clues or reasons for why he didn’t deliver his cargo
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another employee of the trucking company found the trailer sitting at a truck wash in Dallas
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If they would not have found that particular trailer at that time, maybe half a day or a day later someone would have stolen it and taken it for metal or just for scrap,”
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NASA unpacked the crate Thursday morning and said the telescope was unharmed and is in great shape
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Robotic Rehab Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk Again - ScienceNOW - 0 views
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employing a combination of drugs, electrical stimulation, and robot-assisted rehabilitation, researchers have restored a remarkable degree of voluntary movement in rats paralyzed by a spinal cord injury
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After several weeks of treatment, the rodents were able to walk—with some assistance—to retrieve a piece of food, even going up stairs or climbing over a small barrier to get it
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Spinal injuries cause paralysis because they sever or crush nerve fibers that connect the brain to neurons in the spinal cord that move muscles throughout the body
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These fibers, or axons, are the long extensions that convey signals from one end of a neuron to another, and unfortunately, they don't regrow in adults
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Restoring axons' ability to regrow using growth factors, stem cells, or other therapies has been a longstanding—but frustratingly elusive—goal for researchers.
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Most spinal injuries in people do not sever the spinal cord completely
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To approximate this situation in rats, his team made two surgical cuts in the spinal cord, severing all of the direct connections from the brain, but leaving some tissue intact in between the cuts
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had the rodents begin a rehab regime intended to bypass the fractured freeway, as it were, by pushing more traffic onto neural back roads and building more of them
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This regime, which began about a week after the rats were injured, lasted about 30 minutes a day
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During each session, the researchers injected the animals with a cocktail of drugs to improve the function of rats' neural circuits in the part of the spinal cord involved in leg movements
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stimulated this area with electrodes
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With its spinal cord thus primed for action, a rat was fitted into a harness attached to a robotic device that supported its weight and allowed it to walk forward on its hind legs to the extent that it was able
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At first, the rats could not move their legs at all, let alone walk.
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after 2 or 3 weeks, the rodents began taking steps toward a piece of food after a gentle nudge from the robo
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By 5 or 6 weeks, they were able to initiate movement on their own and walk to get the food
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after a few additional weeks of intensified rehab, they were able to walk up rat-sized stairs and climb over a small barrier placed in their path
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did not undergo rehab, in contrast, showed no improvement at all
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Rats suspended over a moving treadmill that elicited reflex-like stepping movement
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full recovery depends on making intentional movements, not just any movement
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Additional experiments in the paper make a compelling case that the rats' recovery is due to new neural connections forming to create a detour around the injury
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s work suggests that all three components of the rehab strategy—the drugs, the electrical stimulation, and the robot-assisted physical therapy
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case study published last year reported some recovery of voluntary movements in a man paralyzed in a vehicle accident, after he underwent a combination of electrical stimulation and physical therap
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two more patients are undergoing similar rehab now, and his group hopes to add drug therapy to enhance nerve repair in the future
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the strategy's limitations. For one thing, it wouldn't work if the spinal cord were completely severed
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treated rats could only make voluntary movements while the electrical stimulation was turned on, and the same was mostly true of the patient Edgerton and colleagues worked with. "This is not a cure for spinal cord injury," Courtine says. "It's a promising proof of principle."
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Nanotechnology breakthrough could dramatically improve medical tests - 0 views
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The material consists of a series of glass pillars in a layer of gold. Each pillar is speckled on its sides with gold dots and capped with a gold disk. Each pillar is just 60 nanometers in diameter, 1/1,000th the width of a human hair
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laboratory test used to detect disease and perform biological research could be made more than 3 million times more sensitive
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increased performance could greatly improve the early detection of cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other disorders by allowing doctors to detect far lower concentrations of telltale markers than was previously practical.
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The greater the glow, the more of the biomarker is present.
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if the amount of biomarker is too small, the fluorescent light is too faint to be detected, setting the limit of detection
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major goal in immunoassay research is to improve the detection limit.
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involves a common biological test called an immunoassay, which mimics the action of the immune system to detect the presence of biomarkers
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When biomarkers are present
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the immunoassay test produces a fluorescent glow (light) that can be measured in a laboratory
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tackled this limitation by using nanotechnology to greatly amplify the faint fluorescence from a sample
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fashioning glass and gold structures so small they could only be seen with a powerful electron microscope
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able to drastically increase the fluorescence signal compared to conventional immunoassays, leading to a 3-million-fold improvement in the limit of detection
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key to the breakthrough lies in a new artificial nanomaterial called D2PA
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a thin layer of gold nanostructures surrounded glass pillars just 60 nanometers in diameter.
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A nanometer is one billionth of a meter; that means about 1,000 of the pillars laid side by side would be as wide as a human hair.
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e pillars are spaced 200 nanometers apart and capped with a disk of gold on each pillar
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sides of each pillar are speckled with even tinier gold dots about 10 to 15 nanometers in diameter
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a sample such as blood, saliva or urine is taken from a patient and added to small glass vials containing antibodies that are designed to "capture" or bind to biomarkers of interest in the sample
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Another set of antibodies that have been labeled with a fluorescent molecule are then added to the mix
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biomarkers are not present in the vials
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fluorescent detection antibodies do not attach to anything and are washed away
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immunoassays are commonly used in drug discovery and other biological research.
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plays a significant role in other areas of chemistry and engineering, from light-emitting displays to solar energy harvesting
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NASA gets two military spy telescopes for astronomy - The Washington Post - 0 views
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NASA officials stressed that they do not have a program to launch even one telescope at the moment, and that at the very earliest, under reasonable budgets, it would be 2020 before one of the two gifted telescopes could be in order. Asked whether anyone at NASA was popping champagne, the agency’s head of science, John Grunsfeld, answered, “We never pop champagne here; our budgets are too tight.”
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The unexpected gift offers NASA an opportunity to resurrect a plan to launch a new telescope to study the mysterious “dark energy” that is causing the universe’s expansion to accelerate.
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The two new telescopes — which so far don’t even have names, other than Telescope One and Telescope Two — would be ready to go into space but for two hitches
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First, they don’t have instruments. There are no cameras, spectrographs or other instruments that a space telescope typically needs.
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Second, they don’t have a program, a mission or a staff behind them. They’re just hardware.
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“Instead of losing a terrific telescope, you now have two telescopes even better to replace it with,” Spergel said.
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Venus Transit As Seen from the International Space Station - 0 views
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This image is from NASA Astronaut Don Pettit on board the International Space Station
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I knew the Transit of Venus would occur during my rotation, so I brought a solar filter with me when my expedition left for the ISS in December 2011
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This is his first image, and we’ll add more as they become available
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